The SoLA dlc has probably the best biome of the entire Dead Island 2 package. The Coachella vibes are great and the map is really unlike anything I have ever played in a game like this. It feels fresh and looks phenomenal visually.

From a gameplay POV, this DLC adds two new enemy types and is hellbent on throwing them at you at every possible instant. In general, the SoLA just throws all the enemy types at you and it's absolutely exhausting. I get it, you want to challenge your players. But god damn. The amount of times an enemy would trigger my character's tumbling down animation is insane. This was an issue in the main game as well but it happened to me so frequently in SoLA that I felt like a good chuck of my playthrough was spent watching the tumbling down animation play out only to then die by from environmental damage. It blows. Like Haus, this DLC also does nothing to the level cap, which is a bummer since there's loot everywhere and all of it is useless because anyone who played the DI2 story has been max leveled for a long time now.

The last boss of the DLC is great and one of the most creative bosses of Dead Island 2. I liked that. But yeah, this DLC ended up accentuating issues I already had with Dead Island 2 and soured me a bit on it. It's not bad. It's an impressive package. Just not one I enjoyed all that much.

Reviewed on Apr 24, 2024


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